inconftancy, and want of faith in dealings and contracts of a commercial nature, feem to be characteristic qualities of rude nations. The love of justice fways only the minds of those who have a lively fenfe of its beauty and utility; while, even in refined fociety, the great part of the vulgar are reftrained from the violation of justice by fear of the chastisement of the law. ORIGIN O E MARRIAGE TA 'ACITUS has given us an account of the Fenni, a German nation, as he inclined to think, whose mode of life appeared to be little removed from that of the gregarious animals of the field: "Fennis mira feritas, fada paupertas, ❝non arma, non equi, non penates: victui herba, veftitui pelles, cubile humus. Sola in "fagittis fpes, quas inopia ferri offibus afperant. "Idemque venatus viros pariter ac feminas alit. « Paffim enim comitantur, partemque predæ peNec aliud infantibus ferarum imbrium 66 tunt. 66 que fuffugium, quam ut in aliquo ramorum"nexu contegantur. Huc redeunt juvenes, hoc ❝ fenum ❝fenum receptaculum *.” This race of people lived chiefly by hunting: their fubfiftence de-. pended upon their daily acquifitions. They fed partly upon herbs. They clothed themselves with the fkins of beafts, and flept upon the ground. Their arrows, being their only weapons, were pointed with bones. They knew not the ufe of horfes. They worshipped no deities. A covering made of boughs fheltered their infants from the weather, and defended them from beafts of prey. These were the receptacles of their young and old of both fexes. The Ichthiophagi, a people of Arabia Felix, went naked. They lived on fifh, and dwelt in rude houses made of the bones of fishes and of fhells. Their wives and children were in common among them. THE accounts given of thefe nations by antient authors, have obtained no high degree of Tac, Germ. c. 46. Diodor. Sic. lib. iii. Strabo, lib. xv. Arrian. Hift. Ind. credit credit even from the learned of modern times. The existence of human beings living in fuch a state of wildnefs, nearly upon a level with the herding animals of the brute creation, has been confidered to be more indebted to imagination than to reality. THE difcoveries of modern times have put beyond doubt the existence of focieties of the human race living in a fimilar ftate with those described by the Greek and Roman authors. The inhabitants of Terra del Fuego, in South America, live in a ftate nearly fimilar to the Ichthiophagi, and equally wild and free*. IN that part of New Holland to which our navigators have given the name of South Wales, "both fexes go ftark naked, and seem to have ❝ no more sense of indecency in discovering the "whole body, than we have in discovering our Banks's and Cook's firft Voyage. "hands |